What is Doris Leeper park and how will FDOT's I-95/Pioneer Trail interchange impact it?
PORT ORANGE — The Florida Department of Transportation are scheduled to open bidding from general contractors to build its planned $120 million Interstate 95 at Pioneer Trail interchange today, April 30, a day after appeals court judges ruled in favor of the controversial project.
The environmentalists and citizens groups that filed a lawsuit to try to block the project argued that it would caused irreparable harm to the adjacent Doris Leeper Spruce Creek Preserve.
The nature park/wildlife habitat is located on the northeast quadrant of the two-lane I-95 at Pioneer Trail overpass that the planned interchange would replace.
The late namesake for the park was a sculptor/painter from Charlotte, North Carolina, who moved to New Smyrna Beach in 1958 and proceeded to make a name for herself, both as an artist as well as an outspoken advocate for nature preservation.
Doris "Doc" Leeper died in New Smyrna Beach on April 11, 2000, just seven days after her 71st birthday. She was the founder of the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach and instrumental in the creation of both the Canaveral National Seashore as well as the Spruce Creek Preserve, according to the Doris Leeper Papers, a document filed with the University of Central Florida Libraries. She also was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1989.
A nonprofit group called Friends of Spruce Creek Preserve successfully lobbied for the Volusia County Council to rename the Spruce Creek Preserve in Leeper's honor shortly after her death.
The park was created when Volusia County and The Nature Conservancy acquired 610 acres along "The Bluffs" of Spruce Creek in 1983. Today, the Doris Leeper Spruce Creek Preserve covers 2,513 acres that stretches from the northern limits of New Smyrna Beach north to Rose Bay.
The entrance to the park on Martins Dairy Road, off Turnbull Bay Road, is just 500 feet north of Pioneer Trail.
The park includes more than three miles of nature trails that lead to a 15-foot-tall observation tower.
New Smyrna Beach resident Bryon White is one of the filers of the unsuccessful lawsuit to halt the interchange project, along with Port Orange resident Derek LaMontagne and two citizens groups: Bear Warriors United and the Sweetwater Coalition of Volusia County.
White grew up next to Doris Leeper Spruce Creek Preserve and worked for several years as a resident caretaker of the park.
"It is a diverse upland and lowland habitat containing spectacular bluffs along Spruce Creek, which is very rare in Florida," he said of the park. "It is critical habitat for wildlife including the gopher tortoise and scrub jay.
"It also contains dozens of archeological sites including a burial complex that was used by the Timucua people for thousands of years."
White said the FDOT project could adversely affect the park because "Runoff and pollution from the road and traffic will enter the canal and pollute Spruce Creek."
Construction of the project is expected to take three years.
Opponents of the FDOT project also expressed concerns that creating the interchange, which will add new on- and off-ramps to I-95 at Pioneer Trail, will encourage developers and builders to add even more new homes and apartments in an area that was once rural, but has seen an explosion in new master-planned communities.
The Pioneer Trail area, within two miles on either side of I-95, is already home to the Venetian Bay, Waters Edge, Golf Club at Cypress Head, Woodhaven and Coastal Woods communities.
ICI Homes continues to add new homes at Woodhaven, while Taylor Morrison Homes recently began construction of new homes at the new Ardisia Park subdivision, located less than a mile from I-95, on the east side of Venetian Bay.
Population growth in in the area west of I-95 has created traffic congestion both at the I-95 interchanges at Taylor Road/Dunlawton Boulevard in Port Orange and at State Road 44 in New Smyrna Beach.
Adding an interchange at Pioneer Trail would alleviate traffic congestion at the two interchanges north and south of it as well as provide residents in the area with another evacuation route during hurricanes and other catastrophic events.
The project is already fully funded and FDOT has already been issued a building permit from the St. Johns River Water Management District.
White said he and the lawsuit's other filers plan to seek the appeals court's ruling to be overturned in federal court.
But for now, at least, it appears that FDOT has a greenlight to proceed with construction.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: How I-95 interchange could impact Port Orange's Doris Leeper Park
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